By Paul Preiss, of Iasa Global
We are at the cusp of a very big set of changes in the world. And if history tells us anything about big technology changes, it tells us we will make mistakes, and one day we will come out the other side, different and improved. But we won’t come out the other side until we find equilibrium. Until then, it will get worse and worse. The only way through is to apply exactly the lessons we learned during other periods of rapid ‘progress’.
Equilibrium means the powers, forces and interests in the system have real checks and balances, so that no one group is the only beneficiary.
In almost every case of a radical new technology, the balancing factor has been an ethically accountable class of people. Modern medicine gave us licensed doctors. The legal system, lawyers. Building and construction, architects and structural engineers. Industrialization… more engineers.
In all of these cases the individual is both accountable and liable for their work. That accountability, plus the base level of competency guaranteed by achieving mastery through intense training and certification, is what lets society and clients trust the professional.
This is why we are building a profession. Not because it makes a lot of money (it doesn’t). Nor because we want a club of experts. We are doing it because technology now has enormous power over people’s lives, which makes the people who make the implementation, value and structural decisions matter enormously. And a real profession is the only way I know to bridge the fear that has been building for the last 15 years or so, along with the financial and power imbalances this massive adoption of technology has created.
Trust
Trust. That is the killer word in this day and age. How do I trust a stranger, an employee, or at some point a machine, to do something that is both complex and requires sound and ethical judgement? Where does that belief come from? When the outcome is simply corporate, a project or a management activity, then maybe we can trust management.
But what about when the outcome impacts you, or your kids? When it is about safety? Identity? Love? Jobs? Health? How do you trust the person who built the medical system in the hospital? What do you do when Google and Revolut are down and you can’t pay rent? Who do you trust when they say they built it right?
If we have learned anything in the last 20 years it is that technology stopped being a corporate engagement a long time ago. It is politics, it is identity, it is health, it is love, it is work, and it is money.
And the imbalances are hurting us, in some cases literally. Technology today is:
- mostly controlled by corporations with a vested interest in consumption over value,
- not mitigated by ethics or proven professionals,
- not regulated by governments willing to back the system with serious and real consequences,
- built by people who were granted or claimed a title not demonstrated a competency model.
Trust is something we give professionals by default (lawyer jokes aside). If someone introduces themselves to you as a neurosurgeon, most people immediately believe that person is smart, capable, reliable and above all a healer. Same goes for building architects… there is a kind of awe at the skill and competency it took to get there.
So who do you trust with technology? And how did they earn it? How do you know their claims are accurate?
The word architect
And here is the real problem. Today the word architect is only used to mean ‘expert at’. Software Architect, ‘expert at’ software. Business Architect, ‘expert at’ business. SharePoint Architect, ‘expert at’ SharePoint. ‘Expert at’ enterprise (which means whatever the speaker wants it to mean). ‘Expert at’ Salesforce, cloud, functions, AI.
BTW, the word engineer in our field is just as problematic… forward deployed engineer (that’s a sales person who wrote some JavaScript). Developers en masse decided to rename themselves. To my knowledge there is no dominant engineering competency model and career progression where they proved they could do the engineering or even what engineering includes.
In both cases, and I’m including how I originally got the title, we are granting serious credentials to ourselves and to each other. That cannot stand the test of trust.
If the word architect just means expert at something, then the word architect has no meaning at all to you or your stakeholders.
We can trust a doctor because ALL doctors take the Hippocratic oath. ALL doctors go to medical school. ALL doctors are there to heal humans. Yes, they specialize, and every one of those specialties still sits inside medicine.
So it is time to stop talking like bickering school kids and decide whether we take our work seriously as a group. If we do, we begin to represent our whole field, along with ourselves.
Where we really are
Here are some facts. We have run over 4,000 skills surveys of architects against the five pillars of the BTABoK (https://www.iasaglobal.org/browse/btabok/3.2): business technology strategy, human dynamics, IT environment, quality attributes and design. 70% of mid-level to senior professionals (5 to 10 years of experience) were entirely missing one of the pillars and were seriously deficient in at least one more. A full 50% of architects surveyed on their practice, in over 200 companies, had severe reservations about their current role, their organization and their ability to function as an architect. And a vast majority of the chief architects we surveyed said their architects could not or would not complete even basic architecture activities in design, decisions, stakeholder management, technical or business work.
This is simply ridiculous. Right now we are the emperor with no clothes.
The way out
Fortunately we have an answer… we built it together over decades. It just wasn’t time before.
It is not quick. Becoming a board-certified professional takes years of real work, and it should. Here is the path.
- Take the base competency assessment here: BTABoK Architecture Manager
- Attend the Core training and certification to get the basic language and a level set.
- Pick 3 competencies in each pillar and improve them using our self paced training and workshops. Dont try to do them all.
- Use the tools at work. Canvases, cards, concepts.
- Make others use the tools at work.
- Move to CITA-A and CITA-P depth in each of them (our Associate and Professional board certifications).
- Help us improve the tools, competencies and concepts.
- Repeat with the people you coach.
I can guarantee that in a few years not only will you be better, your team will be more successful. And I mean that. Our techniques come from the best architects on the planet. They work. That is all.
The big picture
Right now architects as a group have no real seat at the big table. Data center placement, AI strategy, the hype cycle, identity, security, politics, legislation. Some of us impact these a little, one person at a time, but as a group we have been incapable of acting.
This ends now.
We represent the single greatest opportunity humans have for dealing with the complexity of a digital society. And at Iasa, we plan on getting those who are ready into the position we need to be in. Legal, licensed and authoritative.
This is not just me. It is the countless architects I talk to every day. It is you. Only by acting collectively, by building a truly rigorous career path and representing each other with dignity, with trust and with vision, can we hope to impact our world.
So if you are an architect, join us. We cannot each keep moving alone, or we will be forever in the background, under management. We are responsible for shaping the future of technology.